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Epilogue
Community Partnerships in Service-Based Experiential Learning
by Robert L. Sigmon
The stories in this book clearly show that middle and high schools are focusing energy on
arranging community service opportunities for students in ways that create experiential learning
challenges.
These stories demonstrate that young people can and do learn well in community settings.
However, most of the emphasis is on students and their growth. The voices of the citizens who
receive the students and the community organizations who often broker the relationships are
rather muted here. For service and learning enterprises to thrive in an atmosphere of mutuality
and trust among all the partners in these experiences, there is room for raising some questions,
offering a tool for sustaining relationships, and suggesting some reframing of emphases.
The work of linking learning with being in service with others through sustained community
partnerships can sometimes be illuminated by our personal stories, and so a story:
Following my undergraduate college experience, I found myself invited to live with and work
alongside children from outcaste families in Pakistan. My jobs were to be an English teacher,
coach, and residential boarding manager for the 125 boys who came to the school at the sixth­grade
level. There I came face to face with realities that had not been part of my elementary,
high school, and college education. The misfortunes that many children and their families
suffered were numerous and often devastating. The injustices of the economic and political
systems were cruelly unfair to the people who took me in and cared for me for almost three
years.
What I slowly discovered was that I, along with well intentioned Pakistanis, could extend a
helping hand 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, and the overall impact on the
conditions which were so oppressive would not even be touched. Reflection on these
misfortunes and injustices nudged me into thinking about systems influence, social justice issues,
and common sense cultural meanings, much beyond the one-to-one "charity" -oriented service
perspective which informed my initial work.
I slowly discovered that the people I was supposedly "serving" were in fact "serving" me. They
taught me Urdu and some Punjabi; exposed me to another faith (Islam); showed me the
consequences of domination by Euro-centric impulses over several centuries; challenged me
regularly about "preaching brotherhood" as they showed me pictures of dogs jumping on and
water hoses firing on Mrican American citizens in my native country, the United States of
America.
My schooling experiences had not prepared me for this type of learning. But other experiences
had. Working on a self-sufficient farm in North Carolina with my grandparents, working as a
teenager in numerous for-pay jobs, having leadership roles in a small Methodist church, and
working with my carpenter Dad as he did his work making and repairing wood things were more
useful orientation for the work I was asked to do in Pakistan than all my school-based
expenences.
These meanings were slow to evolve for me. Returning from Pakistan, I worked with the
American Friends Service Committee in a service-based learning program with young people in
the Southeast during the Civil Rights Movement. Here in my own country, I saw the
misfortunes, the injustices, the oppressive nature of systems on people. And again, the very
people we were working with became our teachers in what it means to be human, to be a part of
community, to be in relationships of mutual trust and care, and to be part of systems which either
enable or oppress.
In talking with many of my peers over the past 30 years about what has led them into working
with communities and students in a variety of community service-based experiential learning
programs, I have heard stories similar to mine. They tell me that they were exposed to
misfortune and injustice, saw its human horror, and were moved to try to do something about it.
They have also spoken of being "over schooled," that is, told what to study, how to study it, and
how well they studied it. And yet they also knew that their self-initiated experiential learning
had been powerfully influential in their careers and lives.
Each time I have had a conversation with passionate folks working in community service-based
experiential learning, a similar story line emerged: We have seen that all human beings want to
contribute and want to learn, and when we link these two fundamental drives, we have the
framework for creative and compassionate work and learning, or what some of us refer to now as
"service-learning."
A Model for Partnerships
Partnership building and sustaining have become more active words in the experiential education
"movement" in recent years. The concept of"partnership" involves each of the major players
being clear with the other players about what it is that they seek, and what their conditions are
for working together to meet their intended outcomes. Partnership also means that each person
in the arrangement is teacher and learner, contributor and contributed to. The "Anatomy of a
Service-Learning Partnership" chart (developed by Jennie Niles and me) is suggested as one tool
for addressing this concept and realizing the potential when there is mutuality and respect across
the boundaries.
There are four major players in this model, and six relationships.
[show chart here]
Two of the players are institutional and two are individual. One institutional agent is usually a
business, a public agency, a nonprofit organization, or a community-based organization. This
agent helps to define tasks that students address in communities. The other institutional player is
a school that is seeking to broaden its range oflearning opportunities through tasks with citizens
and organizations in the community. The creative work ofbuilding and sustaining relationships
across the widely differing goals of these two entities requires major attention and leadership.
This is one of two primary relationships (A).
The second primary relationship (B) is between citizens in a community and students. Students
want to learn and to contribute something within the framework defined by the citizens. Citizens
invite in the students, to teach them and to get their assistance.
The other four relationships follow the perimeter of the Anatomy chart: (1) Citizens with
community agencies or organizations; (2) Community organizations with students; (3) Students
with their schools, particularly the faculty; and (4) the schools and faculty with their fellow
citizens in communities.
Each of the parties is in a position to be teacher and learner, to contribute and be contributed to.
This assertion is rooted in the value of mutuality, of reciprocity. As each participant sees
herself/himself as learner/teacher and contributed to/contributor, the conditions for a dynamic
and mutually enhancing experience for all is created.
Try using this Anatomy to determine where the strengths are in the six sets of relationships
within the programs you arrange. Look also for where the relationships can be more open and
engaging. In using this chart with others recently, people gained new awareness about some of
the dominating and patronizing assumptions in many community-based service and learning
programs.
No matter how hard we try, the inherent power and control factors will be at work, leading to
distorted communication in these relationships. Faculty, when involved with academically
related service-based learning, have enormous power over students as ""result of having to assign
grades and make sure that the academic dimension is addressed. Students know this and hold
back some of their questioning and insights. Likewise, agency leaders have influence over
citizens who are dependent on their resources. "Services" can be withdrawn or limited if the
"client" is not cooperative. Students can be dominating forces with those they want to serve and
learn from when they appear before people with an attitude of"I am blessed and therefore I must
help you." Within community organizations, there are many very skilled and talented
community leaders who can play a dominant, sometimes manipulating, controlling card to match
or better any card the faculty, the agency leaders, or students play.
In my experience, there is a 100 percent chance that these forms of domination and power
imbalances will lead to distorted communication in service-learning programs, and thus dilute
the potential learnings of all the participants. A first step in addressing this problem is for all the
parties to acknowledge the potential of domination and power imbalance. The next step is for all
the parties to work together with the Anatomy model. y using it, they can ask themselves and
each other a series of questions to help clarify the nature of the partnership.
As each voice speaks, the other voices listen respectfully without judging. Clarifications can be
addressed. At some point, ground rules for further dialogue can emerge, which call for all
parties to be able to speak their own truth through their stories, put out any proposition or
interpretation, or challenge any assertion, but to do it in a civil and respectful manner. In my
work with this model and this inevitable problem, I have found a provocative way to stimulate
this process is to ask: Who among the partners? Is seeking what? As defined by whom? Via what
pattern of relationships?
chill~~~
In my experience, the prescriptive steps just listed are ideals. Rarely do we achieve a level of
undistorted communication and openness across the boundaries of the six relationships in a
service-learning experience. This does not suggest, however, that we should not proceed. An
awareness is one level of understanding. Once into a set of relationships in a linked service and
learning experience with partners shown in the Anatomy Chart, we have the conditions set so we
each can explore fundamental mind sets or "common sense cultural meanings" shaping our
work.
Take for example the common sense cultural meaning or mind set we assigned to the Cold War
after World War II betwee the "West" and the Soviet Union. The United States and its allies
used the threats, real an~erceived, as a way to frame issuesof security, peace, fea , and "" r "' _.. development tbr~ughou the globe. Now that the S0 iet Union is no lo9ger intact,~, engaging in
very differemarrangements within its former bo/cfut.s, the U.S. and iJ:s allies are seeking positive _,
economic('political, and "htary alignments with Russia unimagj nable just a few years ago. The
co~n sense cultural-111eaning ofthe rel ·10nship between the United States and Russia has \
drastically changed.L/'
In service-learning, two contests over common sense cultural meanings or mind sets are central
to our work. These involve "service" and "learning."
Within our American culture, service systems have primarily been set up and defined in ways
that tend to keep many of those served in a dependency relationship to those systems and persons
who do the serving. John McKnight and John Kretzmann, authors ofBuilding Community from
the Inside Out, explain that the primary public resources for caring for those without means to
care for themselves most often go to the providers. Many service providers speak of"providing
service to those with needs." Within service-learning, a different meaning is emerging. The aim
of a service activity is to engage with someone so that the service is one of mutuality, each
serving the other, so that each can be more autonomous and more able to care for self and care
for others. Providers in this frame of mind talk about "being in service with" rather than
"providing service to." Building new common sense cultural meanings at this level is hard
work, for "mutuality" and "being in service with" are not yet dominant values in service delivery
practice and systems.
Or take "learning and teaching." Teaching is often seen as the practice of passing on the
accumulated knowledge of the past and designing situations to help learners develop critical­thinking
capacities through lectures, simulations, library reading, and exams. Learners in this
mode are seen as passive, expecting to be told what to learn, how to learn, when to learn, and
whether or not they have learned. In service-learning activities, teaching becomes much more
facilitative in the sense ofhelping arrange external community-based environments for learning,
and then creating opportunities for reflection on these experiences. Within the national debate
over whether knowledge has social utility or knowledge is for knowledge's sake, the voices for
reframing the common sense cultural meaning of teaching in terms of facilitation are gaining
more and more visibility and credibility.
So, when we link service and learning in a partnership context of individuals and institutions
with widely varying motivations and methods of working, we are stepping into a fertile, yet
uncertain, arena.
A friend who is a teacher put the traditional mind set to me this way recently. "Bob, you are
creating dangerous situations when you link service and learning the way you do. Don't you
know that when you ask students to serve well and also be served by their interactions that you
are asking them to do something very strange to them? Don't you know that when you ask
students to be active participants in their own learning, to be self-initiating learners, that you are
asking them to do something they have very little practice at doing while in school? Do you not
know that many of the agencies serving the public are not supportive ofyour view of mutuality,
that these agencies need the needs of folk they are serving so they can stay in business?"
Given a bent to listen, I heard this volley and sat back for the next round. She kept going strong.
"As a teacher, you have the audacity to ask me to share my students with folks in the
community, go out and make connections with them, even expect these citizens to teach my
students, and expect me to connect my academic discipline to what the students are
experiencing. You've got some nerve, my friend. But most troubling to me is the fact that you
send these kids out, green and naive and with few skills, to groups and individuals that have
more than enough trouble already on their hands. Many of them do not have time or energy to
be taking care of our students like this."
"Been there, heard that before," I said to myself as the past 30 years of being with students,
faculty, community folk, and community organizations unfolded quickly in my memory like a
newsreel. A reframed Mind set or common sense cultural meaning comes out in a different
voice for me, for I have seen powerful learning and creative service when service and learning
are linked, rooted in the belief that everyone wants to contribute and everyone wants to learn.
We can accomplish our aims quite well, thank you, when we choose to work in partnership with
one another, linking the groups identified in the Anatomy of a Service-Learning Partnership.
With thoughtful planning in which all parties participate actively in defining what they seek and
what they can offer, sound programs responding to my friend's concerns can be created. We can
learn to serve and be served by our work in the world, wherever it may be. We can learn to be
self-initiating learners. We can work diligently to overcome dominance and oppression as we
name and deal with the distoned communication that· emerges in response to the controlling of a
few over the many. We can learn to express ourselves, listen to others, and find common ground
in our differences that eventually facilitate the sustaining of just and viable communities.
The principles of mutuality and partnership suggested here are fundamental underpinnings to
living and working in ways where more just relationships emerge and each person has
opportunities to contribute and learn. There is no one standard for this work of linking service
and learning. Nor should we expect one. We each are challenged to make our own calls and
definitions about how we see it taking place in our situation. That is what is so distinctive about
this movement. Most service-based learning practitioners willingly share their ideas and
materials. National organizations, such as the National Society for Experiential Education,
provide forums for this sharing. New insights come from all the parties regularly. Connections
are made with larger movements, like the current "outreach" movement in higher education and
"school success outcomes" in secondary education. The current networking via the Internet
among hundreds of practitioners gives more actual practice to look at and think about.
The challenge and opportunity before each of us is to figure out what we can do within the
framework we have available to create the conditions for people to contribute (serve) and grow
(learn) over their lifetimes so that more just relationships and thriving communities become a
reality in our culture.
References and Suggestions for Further Reading
McKnight, John, and John Kretzmann, Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path
Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets. Evanston, IL: Center for Urban Affairs
and Policy Research, Neighborhood Innovations Network, Northwestern University, 1993.
Distributed by ACTA Publications, 4848 N. Clark St. Chicago, Illinois 60640.
I am grateful to Paul Castelloe for assistance with reframing "common sense cultural meanings";
to Nancy Nickman for her phrase "being in service with"; to Jane Kendall for her phrasing that
we all want "to contribute and grow"; to Jennie Niles for her assistance with the "Anatomy"
chart; and to Gita Gulati-Partee and Bill Finger for their constructive editing of this epilogue.
Robert Sigmon is President ofLearning Design Initiatives, a private consulting and training
practice. His areas of expertise include service-based experiential learning, community
partnerships, servant leadership, and self-directed learning. Bob is a founding and life-long
member ofNSEE.

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